An update on Milwaukee's streetcar project

The city plans to release the proposed route of the Milwaukee streetcar project by late spring or early summer, and hopes to begin construction of the streetcar guideway in spring 2014. »Read Full Blog Post

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So this will stop the green house gases? All this will do is push tax bills up higher and be another burden to the middle class. Keep telling yourself that greenhouse gases if it makes you feel better, but it does make you sound really silly.

Lucky, why is Wisconsin importing natural gas, when we can buy it from our dairy farms?

After the 41-second mark of the Hilarides Dairy (CA) youtube, a metered CNG pump appears. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIkEm8JUOfY The pump's probably very close to what the City of Milwaukee uses. "Milwaukee to start selling compressed natural gas." http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/milwaukee-to-start-selling-compressed-natural-gas-q15gvr7-152730035.html?page=1#!page=1&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst

Even if you leave out evidence that fracking natural gas out of the ground causes earthquakes "Unusual Dallas earthquake linked to tracking...." http://news.yahoo.com/unusual-dallas-earthquakes-linked-fracking-expert-says-181055288.html and pollutes ground water "EPA Changed Course On Texas Fracking Danger After Oil Company Protest" http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/01/16/epa-changed-course-on-texas-fracking-danger-after-oil-company-protest/I would be shocked if (minus the welfare) the dairy farm ROI is not significantly higher.

I am all for the sale of locally collected NG on the open market. If it is profitable without subsidy and you want to siphon off cow farts and sell it to use in my furnace, cook stove, etc and you can make it go as a business then more power to you and I wish you all the success in the world.

I could just see pipelines running from every farm in Wisconsin to a storage facility. Then the sierra club would have something new to get all worked up about the pipelines raping the land. John seems to forget that his demigod Barry killed the keystone pipeline. Liberals hate anything remotely related to energy production unless its related to the fantasy of solar, wind, or other "green energy."

So in other words, my Milwaukee County taxes will continue to go up each year because of stuff like this. In the end it'd be cheaper giving people two mile limo rides. Especially once they add in the cost of removing this thing in 10 years.

This will not make your County taxes go up. In fact it will probably help them drop slightly.

First this is NOT a County project. Absolutely zero County money is going into this project now and in the future. It is entirely a City project.

Second, it is expected that this will cause MCTS ridership to climb. People who wouldn't be caught dead on an MCTS bus will try the streetcar, will like it and decide to check out MCTS. If this happens, it would reduce the MCTS subsidy and therefore reduce County taxes. If this doesn't happen (if MCTS ridership doesn't change), there will be zero effect on County taxes.

Bottom line… the Milwaukee Streetcar will not raise County taxes one penny!

Everyone's money has gone to this, no matter if you live in the city of Milwaukee, Brookfield or Anchorage, Alaska. The largest lump of money that has been allocated for this project was from a federal grant, right? Where on earth, TransitRider, do you think that money comes from?

For God’s sake when is this city going to step out of the Stone Age? Literally anything that makes our city more modern and BETTER is met with blabbering, furious opposition. Better transport, cleaner anything, improvements to the arts, new stadiums, new architecture. You name it, this dinosaur town tries to shut it down. We wouldn’t even have Miller Park without a faithless elector. It really blows my mind. People in this area are content hoarding money in their mattress and never seeing ANYTHING put back into making life BETTER here. The result is all of our neighbors growing and laughing. There was a time Milwaukee was a big name on the map, now it’s Minneapolis’ remedial little brother.

While transit buses are typically scrapped after 10-15 years, streetcars hold up for 25-80 years or more. Many streetcars running in other US cities are much older than most of its passengers and are therefore NOT modern.

What would make life better here are lower taxes so that the people who work for a living can reward local business who are offering attractive and worthwhile goods and services more of their poke. Maybe if the taxes were lower there wouldn't be a huge glut of unsold and unoccupied real estate. I see both of those bringing more to the city than this ill conceived street car.

How about lower taxes and concentrating on the Crime and poverty in the inner city first. How about jobs?? How about working on Medicaide and welfare fraud?? How about worrying about our failing schools. How about those things first. I think they are a little more important then a stupid trolly we CANNOT afford. I live in Milwaukee and I do NOT want my tax dollars used on this pos.

Driveristheman - You think a 2-mile streetcar line is worth $120 million ? When we could serve the same route with a few buses at a tiny fraction of the cost? It's that kind of foolish financial thinking which makes Milwaukee a laughingstock, not the failure to have trolleys or light rail.

Here's Transitrider's list of features for the new streetcar (remember, $120mm for a 2-mile line). Almost every one of the features can be or will be duplicated on any new transit system bus:

-Floors at sidewalk height (zero steps entering or leaving the car--like elevators) [yay! Now I don't have to go up 2 steps!]

- Flexible ("articulated") bodies that bend in the middle allowing tighter turns [Buses have had this for decades, on routes where necessary.]

- Smooth tracks laid on reinforced concrete (instead of wood covered by bricks) [the buses run on the same reinforced concrete, otherwise known as a "road" or "street']

- Regenerative braking for normal stops (energy captured from slowing vehicles is reused) [You are seriously claiming this as a meaningful benefit? The tiny amount of energy recaptured is immaterial compared to the cost of the project. If it were important, we could just buy a couple of electric or hybrid buses which have this feature.]

FS5698 wrote "The buses run on the same reinforced concrete, otherwise known as a 'road' or 'street'."

Actually most roads are surfaced with asphalt, not concrete, and asphalt has a great deal of trouble with buses. Asphalt is soft and buses tend to deform the soft asphalt creating ruts.

All around the country, cities are rebuilding bus routes (or at least the busiest bus stops) into bare concrete. This means that much of the expense of the streetcar (rebuilding downtown streets to be asphalt-free, bare concrete) is also needed for bus service as well.

The difference is that, for the streetcar, the cost of going asphalt-free is all billed to the streetcar, but for buses, it is buried in the general public works budget.

- Pantographs (which, unlike trolleys, cannot slip off the overhead wire) [the bus can't slip off the overhead wire either, and it has the additional advantage of being able to be deployed anywhere and not just on a single $120mm 2-mile route]]

- Anti-crime tools like driver-activated silent alarms and surveillance cameras [Again, buses can have the same. $120mm would go a long way towards installing these in all Milwaukee County Transit buses]

FS5698, apparently you don't ride transit often. If you did, you would understand why the streetcar's stepless-entry is a really big deal.

First, let me guess your age. Under 40? I thought so. At your age, steps are nothing. When you reach my age (61), steps are impediments to be avoided. When you reach my father's age (89) and condition (bad balance, requires a walker), steps are absolutely impassible obstacles.

Also, steps on buses are far higher than standard steps in buildings. I have far more trouble with bus steps than regular building steps because they are just too tall for me now.

And since buses load single-file (so the driver can be sure everybody has paid), the loading process is only as fast as the slowest person in line. Since old people are slowest and are usually the first to board, the entire line moves very slowly.

In the last decade or so, most bus systems (including MCTS) have begun converting to "low-floor" buses which use zero stairs at doorways. But even "low-floor" buses require one LARGE (over 12 inches) step up from the street. Streetcars don't have this problem because they follow the rails and pull right up to the curb and (in Milwaukee, anyway) the curb will be raised at streetcar stops to exactly match the streetcar floor height.

Buses (even low-floor models) waste 15-20 seconds at each stop "kneeling"--lowering the front-right corner of the bus 3 or 4 inches to reduce the distance people must climb to board the bus. Even with kneeling, that step is higher than you would encounter in a building.

And it's not just old people who have problems with bus steps. People using wheelchairs or walkers, mothers with strollers, and people with rolling luggage all find step-less entry essential.

So it will enable people to work at high paying jobs in the Chicago area and then pay their income taxes in Wisconsin and spend their disposable income here, all while paying Milwaukee's high property taxes and supporting the trolley line as well as the Hiawatha. If someone can come up with something wrong with this picture I would like to hear it. This is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing more of, not less.

@Linksking. 40 hours a week? A one-way trip takes about 90 minutes. Assuming one round-trip per day, and a five day work week, that's 15 hours a week. Make that fifteen productive hours--if reading, returning phone calls, or working via laptop PC counts a productive. .

@Linksking - Work in Finance, not many opportunities for that here. I know people that have been doing a Chi commute for 2 years. Only jobs they can find are in Chicago, can't sell their house here, hello 10 hour days. Spot on with respect to 90min is the only train time. Not to mention driving, parking and train delays, exiting Union Station, walking a few blocks, etc.

East Side to downtown, seems useless. Try driving on 94 in or out of rush hours. Should have a train from Oak Creek to Downtown and Downtown and Pewaukee (Stops in W Allis, Brookfield, The Sha, etc). Not just a trolley for bar hopping college kids and tourists. That would encourage people to move out of the City of Milwaukee and back to the task at hand. Taxes, crime, poverty and schools are what makes people move to the burbs.

@FS5689. Illinois and Wisconsin have a reciprocal agreement regarding income tax for those who work in one of these states, but live in the other state. Under this agreement, residents only pay income taxes to their home state. See: http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/tax/2/02

So Chronic whiner, you assume that the person who commutes lives next to the intermodal station, and the train drops them off at the door of their office in Chicago? According to John's post, a person would commute from the east side using the trolley folly, take the train to Chicago, and then either walk or take some other form of public transit to get to their office.

Any way you look at it, 90 minutes is the time you spend on the train alone. In reality its going to be a two hour trip each way. It may not equal out to 40 hours, but any rational person would get tired of that whole routine very quickly.

I was being sarcastic. I have numerous friends that ride the Hiawatha daily (Yes 3 hours a day round trip) to work downtown Chicago. The bigger picture is the jobs are located in Chicago (Corporate taxes are paid there). So as a tax payer, we're subsidizing someone else's commute to Chicago, rather than figure out why jobs aren't being created here. We should be doing "more of" job creation here, instead of making the brain drain to Illinois easier to do.

@Linksking. Amazing how your claim of 40 hours a week became 20 hours, when fact-checked. Some of the commute time also needs to be omitted from the equation. A person living, and working, in metro Milwaukee will also have a commute time.

This is good news for Milwaukee and our mass transit/ infrasturcture for this metro area. While the initial phase is not a lengthly route, it can be developed to spur economic growth and commercial development along its system. Just imagine this system expanding to include Miller Park or the lakefront or Summerfest grounds. A cheap and comfortable way of getting around the city without all the hassle of trying to compete with other vehicles for parking as well as the cost involved. I doubt the Brewers would be happy about the possibility of losing some of their parking income if a streetcar had stops at Miller Park but in the end the experience of going to a Brewer game without the hassle of traffic jams might make the experience that much more enjoyable for fans to attend even more games. As far as those of you upset at the cost of the streetcar project, you only need to look at the price tag of all the local freeway projects completed or in the process of completion in this area. Marquette Interchange $300 million, I-94 south lane expansion for 35 miles at a cost of close to $2 billion($57 million a mile), Lake parkway extension for six miles at a cost of almost $210 million($35 miilion a mile) and let us not forget the zoo interchange and the cost of that project. Yes if one wanted to argue about the cost of the streetcar in comparison to these expensive road projects, the streetcar is a bargain and hardly a boondooggle as many of you call it.

You idiots realize that the trolley fare will be 1/2 of the bus fare, right? That is because it is a short route. So people who take the bus now from the near east side to downtown and the Third Ward and vice versa will ride it to save money. And tourists will ride it. And some people who pay to park downtown will ride it since it will be cheap to ride and run on a schedule. Those on here who say no one will ride it are afraid that they actually will, just like the morons who were so sure that Tommy Thompson would beat Tammy Baldwin in a landslide. How did that work out for ya, eh?

You can't possibly be that dumb. Tourists? Really? You're basing your argument on tourists? The whole point IS that that route is covered by buses, buses that can change routes to reflect user needs unlike a trolley which is limited to where the rail goes.

As usual, Tosajohn needs to namecall and bring up completely irrelevant facts to try to communicate his point to those who disagree with him. What does the Thompson/Baldwin election have to do with the Milwaukee Streetcar? I think maybe the Walker/Barrett election would be more relevant. People in Wisconsin were sick of the kinds of money wasting boondoggles that people like Barrett are purposing with this ridiculous money sieve. Who won that election?

I'm sure John is also pushing for all of those transient college students that will take the trolley from UWM to the Intermodal station so they can catch the bus to Madison to party for the weekend.

The trolley will reduce the number of buses needed, so that will provide a savings to offset the cost of operating the trolley. Most of the riders will be commuters, some of whom who now drive and park but will ride the trolley because it will cost less per month than downtown parking. Businesses will locate near the trolley line because they will know that it can't be moved easily. And remember, it was your hero, Tommy Thompson, who championed perhaps the biggest taxpayer subsidy for a private business in Wisconsin history, namely the Miller Park sales tax increase. Sock it to 'em.

OK, so when it comes time to lay off or reduce overtime of the stratospherically overpaid bus drivers TosaJohn will be back here telling us that laying them off is a violation of their human rights and will be the first one marching outside of city hall demanding they keep their plush pay, benefits and pension.

Yes John, Miller Park has sure been a drain on Milwaukee. All of that revenue from ticket sales, parking, and concessions has been a real weight around Milwaukee's neck. It would have been so much better if the Brewers would have just folded up the tents and moved away. Plus, the added tourist dollars of those who come in from out of town to watch ball games at the park are also a real financial drain to those who run hotels and restaurants. I would figure all the tax income coming through the turnstiles from two million plus fans every year would have you drooling. How about we run the trolley out there too? Maybe then, someone would actually ride it.

How much does a new bus cost as opposed to the entire cost to design, rip up the streets to lay tracks, move all the utilities, build the trolley cars, (I'm sure there will be more than one car) operate, and maintain this boondoggle year in and year out? I'm sure a cost/benefit analysis will never be done by city hall. That would mean there are hard facts to refute the trolley folly.

But tourists do want to see something of Milwaukee, and for tourists without a car (not unusual for guests in downtown hotels), the streetcar is by far the BEST way to see anything beyond walking distance from their hotel.

Tosajohn, it's funny how you are calling people stupid and in the same post you say that the cost of the trolley is justified because the fare will be half of a bus fare and therefore people will ride it. Have you considered what would be the cost of serving the same 2-mile route with a special bus which would charge only 1/2 fare? That's right, the bus would cost a tiny fraction of the trolley. But a solution like that would require too much common sense...the lack of which can be characterized as "stupid." See? It's ironic because you are calling people stupid while being stupid yourself.

KLM747: Why does spending $120mm to build a 2-mile streetcar line "spur economic growth" more than serving the same route with buses at a fraction of the cost? Answer: it doesn't. And if you want to compare the costs per mile of highways versus the streetcar then you have to measure the cost of moving a person a mile. When you compare the number of persons moved on a highway to the tiny number who will be moved on the trolley, the trolley cost is massively higher. Your cost per mile comparison is either intentionally dishonest or laughably stupid.

LinkSing - I guess you weren't around during the Miller Park debate. The Republican who cast the deciding vote, George Petak, was promptly drummed out of office by people who didn't understand the overall economics and didn't want to subsidize a private business, especially one owned by a Jew. Of course, everything you say about Miller Park is correct, but why were the suburban Republicans mostly against the subsidy? Regarding the alternate scenario for the trolley using buses, where would the money come from for the new buses? Wouldn't all the naysayers say that this is just a subsidy for the east side yuppies, why should the other taxpayers have to foot the bill? By the way, the alternate bus scenario is a good idea except for two things: 1) a lot of people who like light rail don't likes buses (go figure), and 2) you can't use the $55 million to pay for it, which is too bad but is a fact. But don't worry, they will find a way around the utility issue (which is the primary reason for splitting the route between Milwaukee Street and Broadway) and the thing will get built and eventually will mostly pay for itself with no more taxpayer subsidy per passenger than we have now.

So, a lot of people who like light rail don't like buses? They are functionally equivalent. We should pay $120mm to pander to some people's aesthetic preferences? How do those picky people get to work now, with their only choice being a bus or a car? Oh, they all have cars? So we are being asked to fund a $120mm transit line for people who don't need public transportation? As for where to get funds for buses instead of rail, if we had lobbied Washington for $4mm for new buses instead of $56mm for trolleys, I'm guessing we might have that funding now.

John, sometimes your posts honestly stagger me. Kind, compassionate, open minded liberal who has to name call first, then when confronted with actual logic, plays the race card as well. Your race baiting should get you instantly banned from this forum, but I know you'd just be back two days later with yet another screen name. Calling people Jews, east side yuppies, idiots, you would fit in great on the floor of the Wisconsin state legislature or over in Eugene Kane's corner.

In answer to your bus question, shouldn't the cost of new buses come out of the MCTS budget paid for by Milwaukee County taxpayers and the $20 wheel tax that every Milwaukee City automobile owner has tacked on to their registration fees every year? They passed that wheel tax years ago, and MCTS still whines about not having enough money. Use the trolley folly money to bail out MCTS instead of building something that nobody will use.

FS5698 wrote "Why does spending $120mm to build a 2-mile streetcar line 'spur economic growth' more than serving the same route with buses at a fraction of the cost?"

There are older buildings downtown with a lot of character but no (or not enough) parking. Banks will not lend money to improve those buildings (or to businesses within them) because they see the lack of parking as a problem. If the streetcar goes past that building, it is connected with over 70,000 public parking spaces (on-street and off-) within 1/4 mile of the streetcar.

So with the streetcar, a building owner can get a bank to overlook the lack of on-premisses parking and get a loan for improvements.

Would the same thing happen with a similar bus?

No, because the bus is too flexible. Unlike the streetcar, there is little likelihood that the bus will remain on that particular route for the life of the loan.

Transitrider, so, you sit in on bank credit committee meetings? And the deciding factor in their Class B and Class C office space building renovation loan decisions is whether there is non-removable public transit which goes near the building? Don't condescend to us, we are not that stupid. There are a hundred factors which go into bank loan decisions and this trolley project is way, way down on the list, if on it at all. Why? Because the vast majority of any employees in any office building downtown are still going to get there in a car. Or a bus. Because this two-mile streetcar doesn't go anywhere near where they live. And your argument that a lack of route flexibility is actually a BENEFIT is laughable. The flexibility of bus routing is a benefit, not the locked-in nature of this trolley. Others on this forum have said the project is meant to have a 100 year payback. We don't even know where the transit will need to be in 10 years, let alone 100.

FS5698, I didn't make up the stuff about development and fixed transit. I got it from page 26 of the Streetcar's Environmental Assessment document:

"Parking is often a limiting factor for development in downtown Milwaukee because financial institutions are reluctant to provide financing for developments that do not include structured parking. This is a particular impediment to the reuse of historic buildings that lack on-site parking."

Yes, of course, most employees at those buildings would drive to work, but they would NOT park at that building (because there are simply no parking places). Instead, they would park elsewhere downtown and hop the streetcar for the last mile or so.

Are you familiar with I-94 Exit 287 (the one with the "Amish Barn", fka "Smiling Barn")? Every time I drive past, I marvel at how much has been built out there. Do you think ANY of it would have been built if I-94 was "flexible" and "movable"? That stuff was build and financed ONLY because everybody knew that I-94 was there for the long term.

The streetcar will be there for the long term. A bus route (especially a new bus route) will not be.

So the $55 milion the City may need to pay for utility relocations wont leave enough to pay for any trolley or "guideway" installation. Milw has $65 million total budgeted to build this $120 million two square block system?

WOW, this really is a Trolley Folley and is "guideway" Tom-Barret speak for choo choo tracks?

Oh and for that $55 million shortfall, better bend over Milw Taxpayers, Barrets coming for more ...

Milwaukee, WI -- Mayor X killed the failed trolley today because of the expected annual operating losses of $12 million again this year. This caps the last two years of deficits totaling tens of millions of dollars. Mayor X stated that "I hate to say I told you so, but that is exactly why I was elected over Trolley Barret. This Trolley was doomed from the start with the $50 million shortfall for construction and fiscal common sense MUST prevail at last. Milw taxpayers deserve better ...

United States vs National City Lines. Look it up.Americans didn't ask to have urban rail or streetcars removed. On the contrary, collusion & monopolization removed them in favor of higher cost (& higher profit) alternatives. Streetcars were forcibly removed, detrimentally removed, as judged by the US Supreme Court."Republicans" hate monopolies & are supposed to like market outcomes, right?

Okay, but in this case it would at least appear that the majority of people don't want this thing. If you want to talk about collusion and monopolization let's talk about Milwaukee standing in the way of having a competitive taxi industry.

@outsider - the problem with your proposal is you need to build it before you will know the actual market outcome. If it's a failure then you've sunk big money into a project that cannot be undone easily. Additionally, you'll be on the hook for maintenance and upkeep indefinitely. Not a good idea.

Why previous streetcar lines may have been removed has nothing to do with whether the current proposed streetcar line is a wise use of public funds. $120 million for a 2-mile line? The cost to serve the same route with buses would be a small fraction of $120mm.